Pablo Picasso Art Quotations

The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls.

Colors, like features, follow the changes of the emotions.

Some painters transform the sun into a yellow spot, others transform a yellow spot into the sun.

The people who make art their business are mostly imposters.

To finish a work? To finish a picture? What nonsense! To finish it means to be through with it, to kill it, to rid it of its soul, to give it its final blow the coup de grace for the painter as well as for the picture.

It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.

There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality.

Every act of creation is first an act of destruction.

He can who thinks he can, and he can't who thinks he can't. This is an inexorable, indisputable law.

We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth, at least the truth that is given to us to understand.

The hidden harmony is better than the obvious.

Art is not the application of a canon of beauty but what the instinct and the brain can conceive beyond any canon. When we love a woman we don't start measuring her limbs.

Painting is a blind man's profession. He paints not what he sees, but what he feels, what he tells himself about what he has seen.

To draw you must close your eyes and sing.

The world today doesn't make sense, so why should I paint pictures that do?

Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.

Who sees the human face correctly: the photographer, the mirror, or the painter?

I don't believe in accidents. There are only encounters in history. There are no accidents.

Art is the lie that enables us to realize the truth.

If only we could pull out our brain and use only our eyes.

I begin with an idea and then it becomes something else.

An idea is a point of departure and no more. As soon as you elaborate it, it becomes transformed by thought.

Art is a lie that makes us realize truth.

Everything is a miracle. It is a miracle that one does not dissolve in one's bath like a lump of sugar.

I paint objects as I think them, not as I see them.

We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand. The artist must know the manner whereby to convince others of the truthfulness of his lies.

Art washes away the dust of everyday life.

Art is a lie that makes us realise truth ... that is given us to understand.

Paintings are but research and experiment. I never do a painting as a work of art. All of them are researches. I search constantly and there is a logical sequence in all this research.

Only when painting isn't painting can there be an affront to modesty.

Art is an instrument in the war against the enemy.

To me there is no past or future in my art. If a work of art cannot live always in the present it must not be considered at all. The art of the Greeks, of the Egyptians, of the great painters who lived in other times, is not an art of the past; perhaps it is more alive today than it ever was...

If I knew what the meaning of art was, I wouldn't tell you.

The different styles I have been using in my art must not be seen as an evolution, or as steps towards an unknown ideal of painting. Everything I have ever made was made for the present and with the hope that it would always remain in the present.

No doubt, it is useful for an artist to know all the forms of art which have preceded or which accompany his. That is a sign of strength if it is a question of looking for a stimulus or recognizing mistakes he must avoid.

As far as I am concerned, a painting speaks for itself. What is the use of giving explanations, when all is said and done? A painter has only one language.

I consider a work of art as a product of calculations, calculations that are frequently unknown to the author himself.

People want Art. And they are given it. But the less Art there is in painting the more painting there is.

Museums are just a lot of lies, and the people who make art their business are mostly imposters. We have infected the pictures in museums with all our stupidities, all our mistakes, all our poverty of spirit. We have turned them into petty and ridiculous things.

Through art we express our conception of what nature is not.

Neither is there figurative and non-figurative art. All things appear to us in the shape of forms. Even in metaphysics ideas are expressed by forms. Well then, think how absurd it would be to think of painting without the imagery of forms. A figure, an object, a circle, are forms; they affect us more or less intensely.

Art is the best possible introduction to the culture of the world. I love it for the buried hopes, the garnered memories, the tender feelings it can summon at a touch. It washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.

Abstract art is only painting. And what's so dramatic about that? There is no abstract art. One must always begin with something. Afterwards one can remove all semblance of reality; there is no longer any danger as the idea of the object has left an indelible imprint.

Art is a leap into the dark.

Art isn't done to decorate apartments, but to wage war against the enemy.

Art sweeps the everyday dust from your soul.

In art, practice always comes before theory.

In art intentions are not sufficient and, as we say in Spanish, love must be proved by deeds and not by reasons. What one does is what counts and not what one had the intention of doing.

Art is not truth; art is the lie which makes us see the truth.

My whole life has been nothing more than a continuous struggle against Reaction and the death of art.

I'm a joker who has understood his epoch and has extracted all he possibly could from the stupidity, greed and vanity of his contemporaries.

When I paint a woman in an armchair, the armchair is there to show illness and death-or as a protection.

Those trying to explain pictures are as a rule completely mistaken.

Art is never chaste. It ought to be forbidden to ignorant innocents, never allowed into contact with those not sufficiently prepared. Yes, art is dangerous. Where it is chaste, it is not art.

All human beings are born with the same creative potential. Most people squander theirs away on a million superfluous things. I expend mine on one thing and one thing only: my art.

An artist must forget painting when he paints. That's the only way he will do original work.

We artists are indestructible; even in a prison, or in a concentration camp, I would be almighty in my own world of art, even if I had to paint my pictures with my wet tongue on the dusty floor of my cell.

I paint what I think, not what I see.

To me there is no past or future in art. If a work of art does not live in the present, it must not be considered at all.

From the point of view of art, there are no concrete or abstract forms, but only forms which are more or less convincing lies.

In art, there is neither past nor future. The art that is not in the present will never be.

All art is subversive.

It is not what an artist does that counts...but what he is.

Art is lies that tell the truth.

Enough of Art. It's Art that kills us. People no longer want to do painting: they make art.

I try to paint what I have found and not what I look for. In art, intentions are of little importance.

This idea of art for art's sake is a hoax.

The purpose of Art is to create enthusiasm.

I have always believed and still believe that artists who live and work with spiritual values cannot and should not remain indifferent to the conflict in which the highest values of humanity and civilization are at stake.

I don't own any of my own paintings because a Picasso original costs several thousand dollars and that's a luxury I cannot afford.

The painter goes through states of fullness and evaluation. That is the whole secret of art.

We might adapt for the artist the joke about there being nothing more dangerous than instruments of war in the hands of generals. In the same way, there is nothing more dangerous than justice in the hands of judges, and a paint brush in the hands of a painter! Just think of the danger to society! But today we haven't the heart to expel the painters and poets because we no longer admit to ourselves that there is any danger in keeping them in our midst.

They'll sell you thousands of greens. Veronese green and emerald green and cadmium green and any sort of green you like; but that particular green, never.

There are painters who transform the sun to a yellow spot, but there are others who with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into sun

What do you think an artist is? ...he is a political being, constantly aware of the heart breaking, passionate, or delightful things that happen in the world, shaping himself completely in their image. Painting is not done to decorate apartments. It is an instrument of war.

Painting is stronger than me, it makes me do it's bidding.

You don't make art, you find it

I never calculate. That is why those who do, calculate so much less accurately than I.

Everyone wants to understand art. Why not try to understand the song of a bird? ...people who try to explain pictures are usually barking up the wrong tree.

Art is not chaste. Those ill prepared should be allowed no contact with art. Art is dangerous. If it is chaste, it is not art.

Bad artists copy. Good artists steal.

Everyone wants to understand art. Why don't we try to understand the song of a bird? Why do we love the night, the flowers, everything around us, without trying to understand them? But in the case of a painting, people think they have to understand.

If I spit, they will take my spit and frame it as great art.

The academic teaching on beauty is false. We have been misled, but so completely misled that we can no longer find so much as a shadow of a truth again. The beauties of the Parthenon, the Venuses, the Nymphs, the Narcisusses, are so may lies. Art is not the application of a canon of beauty, but what the instinct and the brain can conceive independently of that canon.

The urge to destroy is also a creative urge.

I do not seek. I find.

The people no longer seek consolation in art. But the refined people, the rich, the idlers seek the new, the extraordinary, the extravagant, the scandalous. I have contented these people with all the many bizarre things that come into my head. And the less they understand, the more they admire it. By amusing myself with all these games, all this nonsense, all these picture puzzles, I became famous... I am only a public entertainer who has understood his time.

Critics, mathematicians, scientists and busybodies want to classify everything, marking the boundaries and limits... In art, there is room for all possibilities.

Everything you can imagine is real.

When art critics get together they talk about Form and Structure and Meaning. When artists get together they talk about where you can buy cheap turpentine.

To blossom forth, a work of art must ignore or rather forget all the rules.

Everyone wants to understand art. Why not try to understand the song of a bird? Why does one love the night, flowers, everything around one, without trying to understand them? But in the case of a painting people have to understand. If only they would realize above all that an artist works of necessity, that he himself is only a trifling bit of the world, and that no more importance should be attached to him than to plenty of other things which please us in the world, though we can't explain them. People who try to explain pictures are usually barking up the wrong tree.

I don't say everything, but I paint everything.

Art is the elimination of the unnecessary.

Music and art are the guiding lights of the world.

We now know that Art is not the truth... but rather a way of approaching the truth.

We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth at least the truth that is given us to understand. The artist must know the manner whereby to convince others of the truthfulness of his lies.

...art is something subversive. It's something that should not be free. Art and liberty, like the fire of Prometheus, are things that one must steal, to be used against the established order.

Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.

Art is a finger up the bourgeoisie ass.